Creative Commons, Open source licenses, Copyright

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge with free legal tools.

CC licenses are copyright licenses and irrevocable - not recommended for software or hardware!

Keep your rights!  Use CC-BY: (Current version is 4.0 international)
You keep the right of your work and are given credit
protects from unintended exclusive commercial exploitation, commercial use for everyone
provides legal clarity
allows free and legal sharing, re-use, dissemination, remix, adaption in any medium or format
consider: CC-BY-SA

Legal code: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.en

CC-BY-NC/ND:
Exclusive commercial rights go to publishers (check your license to publish!)
commercial exploitation by publishers, without your consent
Not compatible with OA definition
legal uncertainty

Legal code: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode.en

Examples of reuse not  compatible with a CC-BY-NC licence:

  • Use in Wikipedia
  • Distribute a work in the context of a commercial summer school course
  • Copy a text for indexing or text mining for commercial purposes
  • Reproduce a work in magazines, newspapers or websites that produce revenues
  • Reuse parts of a work (e.g. tables or figures) for advertising or marketing purposes

Choose your license

Other licences: GNU, Apache, Mozilla overview by: Open Source Initiative

Search Openverse for open  access (CC-licensed) images or audios.

Copyright questions: Please contact the library for questions: e.g. pictures on websites, in publications, reuse of publications ....

Till Kreutzer: Open Content a practical guide to using Creative Contents licenses (CC BY 4.0) , p. 46

Futher reading:

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